The Beach Café

by Lucy Diamond

  The weekend passed, and still Ed didn’t get in touch or show his face. I was resigned to the fact that he’d gone now, but it didn’t make me feel any better. In fact, I felt more of a fool with every day that went by. I’d been vulnerable, on the rebound from Matthew, I realized miserably, and he’d taken advantage. ‘It was my fault just as much, though,’ I moaned on the phone to Amber. ‘He didn’t force me into anything, I was fair game. I just . . . thought he was better than that. When, in fact, it turned out he was nothing but—’

  ‘A cockhead,’ Amber suggested helpfully.

  ‘Yes, exactly,’ I said. ‘A total cockhead disguised as a nice guy. A wolf in chef’s clothing.’

  She was having a better time of it than me, luckily for her. She’d had a call-back from the BBC for a second audition for a new role they were casting in Holby City. ‘I am bricking it,’ she said cheerfully, ‘but excited too. This could be it, Evie. I know I always say it, but this really could be it!’

  ‘Oooh, matron,’ I said in my best, fruity Kenneth Williams voice. ‘Fingers crossed here for you.’

  My sister Louise surprised me by phoning for a chat the same evening. ‘When can we come and see you?’ she asked. ‘Ruth’s kids haven’t stopped going on about visiting your café, and mine are all desperate to come down.’

  ‘Really?’ I asked in surprise. A warm feeling swelled inside me.

  ‘Yeah! It feels like ages since we saw you, Evie, it’s been weird without you here.’

  ‘Has it?’

  ‘Yes, of course! And I was really sorry to hear about Matthew, by the way. What a jerk. I never thought he was good enough for you, anyway.’

  ‘Didn’t you? I mean . . . thanks.’ I realized I was gaping at all the revelations that were coming down the phone line and was glad nobody was there to see me.

  ‘So, when can we come?’ she asked. ‘How about the last weekend in June?’

  ‘Lovely,’ I said, still feeling somewhat stunned. Louise and her kids wanted to see me. Me, the black sheep! I know that in most normal families this wouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary, but it felt like a moon-landing for me. I found myself smiling whenever I remembered the conversation for the rest of the evening.

  On Monday the café was closed, and I interviewed my shortlist for the chef’s job. The Wadebridge deli-worker informed me that she wouldn’t be available to work weekends or school holidays (which just so happened to be our busiest times). The chip-meister smelled distinctly alcoholic, despite the Polo mint he was crunching. The fifty-something ex-pub chef had a horrendous personal-hygiene problem and confessed that he’d lost his last job because of a brawl he’d had with the restaurant manager. ‘We were only mucking about,’ he said unconvincingly, as I sat there, goggling in horror. ‘I didn’t hurt him or anything.’

  In a nutshell, they were all hopeless. And as if that wasn’t enough, I had a surprise visit from Carl, who walked in as I was halfway through the third interview, asking if he could have his old job back as he’d been unexpectedly ‘let go’ from his new place of work. The ex-pub chef swung round so aggressively that I thought he was going to challenge Carl to a duel for the position. ‘Carl, I am actually interviewing for the chef ’s job right now,’ I told him, rattled. ‘And I’m afraid the answer in your case is no.’

  ‘But—’ he began.

  The ex-pub chef rose threateningly in his chair. ‘You heard her,’ he said. I half-expected him to start cracking his knuckles. ‘Beat it.’

  The whole interviewing experience was utterly depressing. I couldn’t believe there wasn’t a single suitable candidate who could hold a candle to Ed’s prowess. I’d been bloody lucky with Ed, I realized. I missed him more than ever. I called Wendy at home and begged her to make me some more pasties for the next week, then rang round the recruitment agencies again to see if they had anyone who might be interested in the job long-term. They didn’t seem hopeful. ‘We’ll see what we can do,’ the last one said. ‘But you are kind of cut off there. It’s harder to place people when they need their own transport to get to and from work.’

  I sank into gloom. Maybe I had been aiming too high. Maybe this was why Jo had ended up taking on no-hopers like Carl and Saffron. Maybe I’d dismissed Carl too hastily earlier on when he’d turned up, cap in hand. Should I give him another chance after all?

  I sighed heavily, gazing out of the window at the rain, which had just started lashing down again. Rehiring Carl felt like a step back, though. I might be desperate, but I wasn’t that desperate. No. Onwards and upwards, Evie, I reminded myself. Tomorrow I had the TV crew coming, and the girls’ night in to look forward to. It was going to be a fab evening – it seemed as if every woman in the village was booking in emergency cuts and blow-dries with Sheena, the mobile hairdresser, and excitedly discussing what they would wear, in anticipation of being on the telly. The café was thriving, the community had accepted me, there was lots of good stuff happening too.

  Onwards and upwards. I’d just keep repeating it to myself until I finally believed it.

  I slept badly on Monday night. Not only was I tossing and turning, kept awake by worrying that I’d never get a chef as good as Ed, and thinking about all the things I wanted to do to make the café look perfect for the next day’s filming, but the rain was absolutely hammering down again, and a ferocious wind blasted around the café. The building was a rather higgledy-piggledy structure, with new and old parts. The kitchen and the main area of the café were single-storey, having been added on as later extensions to the original walls, whereas its older middle section, where the flat was, consisted of two storeys, like a ship’s bridge. On this night, with the wind howling around, and the building creaking and groaning, it really did feel like being aboard a ship, on a stormy sea. In the end I stuffed in some earplugs to block out the noise, put the pillow over my head and finally fell asleep.

  When I woke the next morning the sun was shining, and I smiled at the thought of the camera crew arriving in Carrawen within the next few hours and capturing it on film in all its sunlit beauty. Hurrah! Forget the chef problem, today was the day my beach café would be filmed for Channel 4. I felt rather like an expectant bride waking up on the morning of her wedding, all jittery and excited, and hoping that everything would go perfectly. Please let everything go perfectly, I said under my breath. It would be just my luck if some disaster happened on film – like a plague of rats or locusts emerging from my kitchen – and for it then to be shown on national television. Kiss your café career goodbye, in other words.

  But that was not going to happen. That would not happen today. The universe had given me a lucky break, sending Francis my way, and I was going to prove to the entire country that the Beach Café in Carrawen Bay was the most desirable place to hang out in Cornwall.

  I jumped in the shower, then sauntered down to breakfast. And that was when I let out a scream of shock and dismay, followed by quite a lot of swearing and wanting to cry. Oh my Godddd . . .

  ‘No,’ I gasped, tears springing to my eyes. ‘Oh no.’ Not today! Why did this have to happen today?

  It seemed that the storm had been even worse than I’d thought. It also seemed that my earplugs had proved to be the industrial-strength variety, capable of blocking out even the loudest sounds – like that of half my café roof collapsing in the night.

  Because, yes, disaster had struck all right. The universe was pointing and laughing at me, clutching its sides with glee at the latest spanner it had just lobbed into the works. I kept looking up and looking down, hoping I had made some mistake, that I was dreaming or that it was a bizarre trick of the light, but no. There really was a whopping great hole in my roof. You could actually see the mild blue sky through it. And there really were great lumps of plaster on the floor, right in the middle of the café, with huge surrounding pools of rainwater turning them into islands in a lake.

  Shit. And double shit. And shit to the power of a million billion zillion. I double-checked, up and down. The h
ole was still there. The carnage on the floor was still there.

  I sagged in dismay, clutching at the wall for support. Tears spilled down my face. No telly programme now. No glorious girls’ night triumph now. How could I even open up the place, when customers ran the risk of having chunks of the ceiling dropping on their heads? It was all off. So much for feeling like a bride on her wedding morning – now I just felt like a bride who’d been jilted at the altar, with the happy-ever-after she’d been promised snatched away from her at the last moment.

  Okay. Pull yourself together, Evie. Got to do something about this. Be practical, start sorting it out. Worse things happened. Maybe the TV people would wait a few days until I’d got the roof repaired and everything cleaned up. But oh, of all the days for things to go pear-shaped . . .

  After a few minutes’ hand-wringing, I did what every competent, hard-headed, go-getting businessperson does in a crisis. I phoned my dad.

  ‘Is your insurance up to date?’ he asked first of all. Good question. I hadn’t got a clue.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, crossing my fingers.

  ‘If there’s a lot of damage, you need to get them out to look at the problem. Don’t just start work without their say-so,’ he told me. ‘You might not be covered, if you go ahead without them agreeing to the repairs.’

  I sighed. ‘But I need to get it fixed for tonight, Dad, there’s a television crew filming here, and—’

  He snorted. ‘Tonight? You’ll be lucky,’ he said.

  I rang the insurance company (I was up-to-date with my payments, thankfully). They said it would be two days before someone could inspect the property, in order for me to put a claim through. I told them I didn’t have two days. Two days was out of the question. I pleaded with them to come round sooner, like in the next hour. I actually used the phrase ‘I’m begging you’ and let rip some blatant snivelling.

  The woman on the end of the line didn’t quite snigger at my cluelessness, but I reckon it was a close thing. ‘I’m sorry,’ she cooed, sounding as if she couldn’t care less. ‘The earliest we can come is Thursday.

  I put the phone down and burst into tears all over again.

  Bollocks. Now what?

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I was just on the verge of hyperventilating in despair when Rachel and Leah turned up for work. ‘Holy crap, what happened here?’ Rachel asked, wide-eyed when I let her in. ‘Was this from the storm last night?’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Leah cried. ‘What a mess.’ Then she looked even more horror-struck. ‘But what about our filming?’

  I sighed. ‘I guess the filming’s off,’ I replied gloomily. ‘I won’t be covered by my insurer unless I go through their stupid slow process, and I just can’t afford to get someone to come in and fix it otherwise.’ I raked my hands through my hair. ‘I guess I could climb onto the roof and try to patch up the hole myself, but . . .’

  Rachel shook her head. ‘No way, Evie,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to do that.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed, ‘and it’s not just the roof outside – it’s the ceiling in here that’s a massive problem too. Loads of plaster has already come down; I don’t know how much more will – ’ I broke off, jumping as a large lump of grey plaster suddenly plummeted from the edge of the hole and smashed onto the wet floor, as if proving my point. Leah screamed and we all backed away in alarm, eyeing the ceiling warily as if the whole thing might come down on us.

  ‘Oh, man,’ I moaned. ‘Look, maybe you should both go. It’s probably not safe to be in here. We’re not going to be able to open up today, now that this has happened.’ I felt like crying, not really knowing what to do.

  ‘Aw, mate,’ Rachel said, putting her arm around me. ‘I was really looking forward to this, too. The café’s big day.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe it. These things always happen to me. Me and my stupid big dreams . . .’

  ‘Well, we’ve got today,’ Leah said, hands on her hips. ‘They’re not filming until tonight, so . . .’ She gazed up at the hole in the roof again, her expression turning doubtful. ‘Surely we can do something about this? There must be a local builder who could pay an emergency call.’

  ‘I’ve got to think about the costs, though,’ I told her, also staring up at the hole. The blue sky seemed to mock me through it. ‘It could be hundreds or thousands of pounds to fix it, and I don’t have that sort of cash knocking around.’ I sighed again. ‘I’m just going to have to hang on for the insurance people to cough up. See if Francis can wait a while.’

  Rachel’s mouth twisted as if she thought this was unlikely, but didn’t have the heart to say so. ‘Mmm,’ she said. ‘He did seem kind of in a rush, though, didn’t he?’

  There was a doleful silence for a moment, and I was about to send them away, give them the next few days off, when Leah spoke. ‘I’ve got an idea,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Why don’t we get Jono to take a look? He’s worked on building sites in the past, he might have some advice for you.’

  Jono was one of their backpacker mates, I seemed to remember. ‘Well, that would be something,’ I agreed. ‘He’d know more about it than we do, he might have an idea of the costs it would involve. Is he around today?’

  ‘He was still in bed when we left,’ Rachel said. ‘Leah, do you want to go and drag him out? Get Craig and the other guys too. I’ll stay and give you a hand clearing up in here, Evie.’

  Leah vanished. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll get the mop and brush.’ Then I stopped. ‘Did you say Craig was here? As in your Craig?’

  She blushed violently. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘He got here yesterday. It is so good to see him again.’

  I hugged her, momentarily forgetting my ruined café. ‘Oh, that’s fab,’ I said. ‘Yay for you and Craig! So things are okay, are they?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, beaming. ‘Really okay. It wasn’t until I saw him that I realized just how much I missed him. I’m totally stoked to have him back.’

  ‘Aww, look at you going all red and soppy,’ I teased her. ‘I’m impressed that you tore yourself away from him. Florence will be chuffed for you too, won’t she?’

  We began cleaning up cautiously, avoiding standing underneath the gaping hole in the ceiling as we slowly mopped the huge lake of water that had gathered on the floor. Annie arrived soon afterwards, laden with new cakes, and gave a cry of shock when she saw what had happened. ‘Oh, no!’ she exclaimed, eyes wide in dismay. ‘Oh, what a shame. Of all the times for it to happen too, just before your big night.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. She’d had her hair done, I noticed, and felt even worse. I knew Annie didn’t have a huge amount of money to spare for trivial things like haircuts. She must have been really excited about the TV show to have done that. ‘I don’t suppose you know a nice friendly roofer who’d be able to come in and sort this out on the cheap?’ I asked, pulling a face as I heard how pathetic and desperate I sounded.

  ‘I don’t,’ she admitted, setting the cake boxes down on a table and frowning, ‘but . . . let me think. Who might be able to help?’ Her face cleared. ‘Well, I don’t know a roofer myself, but I know someone who will. Could be worth a try.’

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘Give me two minutes,’ she said. There was a twinkle in her eye. ‘I’m not promising anything, but . . . two minutes!’

  And then she was dashing out of the café before I could ask her anything else and hurrying away towards the main street.

  I felt a flicker of hope flare up inside, but as two minutes turned into five, and then ten, this brief burst of optimism gradually leaked away. Rachel and I were still trying to clear the water from the floor, but there was a lot of it, and the soggy plaster left dirty grey smears on the tiles.

  Then the door opened again. ‘We’re closed,’ I said automatically as I turned. Then I straightened up, feeling almost embarrassed as I saw that it was Francis, with a couple of blokes.

  ‘We just came by to confirm details for tonight,’ he said, the
n stopped, taking in the scene of devastation. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh, dear.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, my spirits sinking all over again as I saw the café through his eyes. ‘I was going to phone you, Francis. I think we might have to call tonight off, after all. Can we delay the filming for a day or so until I get this sorted out?’ I crossed my fingers behind the mop handle, but he was shaking his head.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘We’re so tight already, what with bringing in this extra piece in the first place, that I don’t really think . . .’ He exchanged glances with his crew.

  ‘I guess we could just change the location,’ one of them suggested. ‘Film at the local pub or – ’

  Francis didn’t look convinced. ‘It was this place, though, that I really wanted,’ he said. ‘The atmosphere won’t be the same in the pub. Too noisy, for one thing, and it won’t be that whole community vibe that we’re looking for. Damn it.’ He frowned, scratching his head.

  I saw that some of the crew were looking really pissed off, obviously not in the least bit happy about having been dragged all the way down here to Cornwall on Francis’s whim, only for the whole thing to backfire before it had even happened.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said wretchedly. ‘I’m trying to get the problem sorted, but . . .’

  I broke off and stared as I noticed through the window that a group of people were approaching along the beach, heading straight for the café. There were Annie and Leah, but also a number of blokes I didn’t recognize, some of whom were carrying toolkits. Others were speaking into their phones. ‘Hold on,’ I muttered to myself. ‘What’s all this about?’

  Rachel peered out of the window. ‘Well, there’s Craig and Jono,’ she said, pointing them out at the front, ‘and as for the others – well, it looks like the cavalry to me.’ She grinned at Francis. ‘I reckon you’re about to see the Carrawen Bay community swinging into action,’ she laughed. ‘In fact, maybe you should start filming right now.’